


Till Sunbeams Find You

by Re_repeat



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Medical Text, Nightmares, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 06:34:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Re_repeat/pseuds/Re_repeat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eponine has a nightmare and is an ugly crier. Even the fluff has fluff. Happy late Barricade Day!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Till Sunbeams Find You

Eponine wakes up crying. She feels the tears running down her face and wonders briefly if they started during her dream or because of it. Her dream (nightmare) has left her wide awake but paralyzed. Her world is blurry and dark and it takes her a moment to really remember her dream and her body doesn't listen to her brain which tells her mouth to be quiet. In response it lets out a sob.

She feels the hand on her stomach twitch and the body that it’s attached to move. She hopes Combeferre is still asleep. She hates the thought that she woke him up over a bad dream. She is not five years old, she is twenty-one, and she can handle herself. "Eponine?" It's a sleepy question. He's testing the waters. She could easily play this off—he's mentioned a few times that she talks in her sleep.

"I'm fine," Eponine whispers. "Go back to sleep." Her voice is shaky, but she hopes he'll be tired enough to not question it.

Instead he rolls her over, and she can see the look of concern on his face by the light from the hallway (which she always keeps on in case Gavroche decides to show up in the middle of the night). "You're crying," he says quietly, wiping his hand gently across her cheek.

"Thanks Captain Obvious," she responds. "Go back to sleep, I'm fine." He moves to turn on the bedside lamp and she grabs his hand. "I'm an ugly crier, you don't want to see it."

He starts running a hand through her hair and kisses her forehead. "I don't care about that. I just want to know what's wrong."

"It's stupid."

"I don't care, I still want to know."

Eponine sighs and closes her eyes. Some of her dream is still jumbled and incoherent, but some of it is extremely vivid, and those are the parts that he wants to know. She isn’t sure she can verbalize those parts. She isn’t sure she wants to. "It was just a bad dream. I, it was, ugh, let’s not talk about it. Lets just go back to sleep."

Combeferre presses a kiss to her temple and keeps running his fingers through her hair in the way that he knows she likes. "Are you sure you'll be able to?" He asks. He's never seen her wake up crying, but he has seen her wake up with a grim expression on her face, unable to go back to sleep for hours. He always tries to stay up with her but eventually his eyes start to droop and then the alarm is going off and he can tell she hasn't gotten enough sleep because her eyes stay half open the whole morning.

"Maybe," she lies.

"Dreams are just a way that our brain works out things we don't understand," he says into her hair. "Maybe I can help you along a little."

Eponine sighs, "Fine. I had a dream that we were in the 1800s during some political uprising. And I don't really know what happened, but Gavroche was shot and died, and he was the first to die, but I knew everyone was going to die, and I watched as the French soldiers shot everyone. They shot you," at this her voice cracks and she has to take a breath to calm herself. "They shot you and I couldn't do anything because I was already dead, but I was somehow able to see everything and all I wanted to do was help you. Help everyone. But everyone was dead."

And he's holding her close and his hand is now rubbing circles into the nape of her neck and the other is just stable. "I'm not dead though," he says. "I'm right here." He kisses the top of her head. "Everyone is fine."

"I know," she says into his neck. "It just, I don't know, it just seemed so real. I could smell the death and fire."

"It's okay now," He whispers. "try to go back to sleep." 

She feels sleepy, but not nearly enough to go back to sleep. She just wants to lie here and hear his pulse and his voice. "Can you do me a favor?" She asks.

"Anything."

"Can you tell me really boring medical things?"

She feels him chuckle and she decides that she'll never get sick of the way it makes her heart tighten. "Because it will bore you back to sleep?"

"Yes," she responds. She's not ready to tell him yet that she could listen to him talk about anything and it will make her feel safe and calm. (It just so happens that medical knowledge also makes her feels safe, calm, and sleepy.)

"Okay," he says. "Vitamin B12 absorption by total body counting was also measured following pentagastrin stimulation in 19 patients with P.A., in 38 non-P.A. achlorhydrics and in 38 acid secretors. The pentagastin (6 μGm./Kg. body weight) was given 10 minutes…"

**Author's Note:**

> Article citation: Irvine, WJ, DR Cullen, L Scarth, JD Simpson, and SH Davies. "Total Body Counting in the Assessment of Vitamin B12 Absorption in Patients with Pernicious Anemia, Achlorhydria Without Pernicious Anemia and in Acid Secretors." Blood. 36.1 (1970): 20-7. Print.
> 
> Also this is terribly fluffy. It also is not in tone with my other series which is why it is a standalone piece.


End file.
